What a wonderful review! It almost makes me feel like embarking upon a journey on foot myself. Well, almost, as the reviewer suggests 'and it is hard to think of a more pleasurable way to do so without leaving one’s chair.'

It reminds me of another book by Sam Miller, a BBC journalist posted in India, 'Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity' in which the author endeavors to experience Delhi not in the usual touristy way but, per him, as it should be experienced - on foot. He first makes rough sketches or maps of the areas he intends visiting on that day and then sets out to do so. He goes on to describe what he sees, feels, smells, and hears on his way. He also narrates various incidents and events associated with the places he visits. Its almost as if you are wlaking with Mr. Miller, discussing and debating with him rather than merely listening to him or being subject to his soliloquy.

I get the same sense after reading the review above. I hope the book is as good.

A request to The Economist: Can you please embed a downloadable excel file listing 'The Year's Best 100 Books' on your website since you began publishing this list? That will be a huge bonus to avid readers like me.

An amazing review. Walking can be a relaxing experience if your mind is uncluttered, if no immediate issues need to be catered to. Just walk out,away from the urban chaos. Notice the cloud formations, how they resemble different animals, how a leaf flutters as if dancing to some music,notice the birds against the orange backdrop hurrying to reach their nests before it gets dark!

Why the gratis anti-Israel comment in the review of "... under the eye of Israeli guards ... ", implying that the risk of his hike was due to Israeli soldiers, not the continuing spate of murders of lonely hikers by Palestinian Terrorists (sorry, I mean "Freedom Fighters"), for which the Israeli soldiers are there to prevent.

Any perusal of the news will show how innocent hikers, including women, have been waylaid, tortured and killed in the Wadis of Judea. Israeli soldiers are there to protect not to attack, as this comment implies.

Can one, for example, imagine going from the ancient city of Tripoli to other ancient city, Athens, by foot? This would mean crossing the Old Hellenic/Persian/Aramaic/Biblical Worlds. He (she) would cross Libya, Egypt, an ancient Christian monastery in Sinai, the Israeli-sieged/occupied Gaza strip, Israel, Jerusalem, the Israeli-occuppied West Bank, Israel again, the ancient cities of Lebanon, the ancient cities of Syria among them Damascus who originated the Aramaic "lingua franca", the old Mesopotamia, the ancient Iranian cities, Iraq Kurdistan, Azerbaidjan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, Turkish Kurdistan, Turkey, and finally Greece. There are at least a dozen conflicts, with dangerous borders to be crossed.

In Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman imperial times that trip to places so entrenched in our common heritage would be done safely, except for eventual bandits. Now there are civil wars, international wars, terrorist groups of several brands and... common bandits.

Walking is wonderful and I used to do it for hours -- just pick a direction and start moving. Fifteen or twenty miles, it didn't matter to me. I was like one of those characters in a Jane Austin novel, the sort that used to go for post-prandial walks in herds. Darwin . . . Goethe . . . and any number of thinkers (Socrates too, come to think of it) were dedicated walkers. However . . .

In my mid-50s I hit the Bladder Barrier and learned the hard way never to be more than fifteen minutes from home. My straight walks became elliptical and I now circle my house bathroom like an asteroid in outer orbit. And, in case you have a smirk on your face, wipe if off now -- your bladder isn't made of leather, copper-riveted, either. At some point in later middle-age you, too, will find yourself traveling greater distance up-and-down than forward as you wait for a turn at a public restroom.

Then, in my '60s, I hit the Footsore Fence. Here is a bulletin for the young -- the metatarsals were made for slow tracking of a wounded wildebeest and not for Olympic-style speed-walking. Add a soupcon of early eighth-decade arthritis and one is content to leave the long journeys to the like of Sacajaewa.

Those of you born after 1990, enjoy the long walks -- they are truly relaxing and invigorating at the same time! Those born before 1990 -- starting thinking "bicycle."

"He does not pretend to have deep thoughts while walking. Walkers know it seldom happens that way. The tendency is to notice that tree, that stile, that passage of light (rionnach maoim, he tells us in a typically lovely aside, is Gaelic for “the shadows cast on the moor by cumulus clouds”)."

This will be a fun read. I stopped listening to my IPOD on my walks, and I was rewarded by the sound of birds, and leaves rustling. I usually end up at Ben & Jerry's where I get the chocolate therapy special. Its a couple of scoops of ice cream, covered in hot fudge, all placed inside a waffle cone. MacFarlane it seems is feasting on rivers, smooth stones and cool velvet grass. I want to be like him. I will get this book.

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”
“Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.”
Bruce Chatwin.
I use to read a lot of Chatwin's books, so what am I doing here? (lol)
I look forward to reading Macfarlane's new book.
By the way, the sacred pyramidal ice-mountain in Tibet is probably Mount Kailash (6,638 m). Minya Konka (Gongga Shan) is higher (7,556 m) and is located in modern-day Sichuan, I believe.

most riskily, a network of wadi trails near Ramallah, in Palestine, under the eye of Israeli guards.

This is so scary, I can just picture those Israeli Guards brrr looking at him walking and conspiring to do him harm.
Now I will have nightmares, why wasn't I warned that under this nice photo and apparantly beautiful story hides a scary and risky story of blood thirsty israeli guards brrrr in palestine??
Now, I am becoming paranoid, since most israelis work in start-up and hightech industries, it is quite probable that some of those guards who were probably doing there reserve duty and got back to their jobs later on have to do with the intel processor we all now have running on our machines.
Imagine, not only those israeli guards are stocking innocent wanderer in the Wadis, they are also present on our pc. (each one of us has a trace of an Israeli guard bbrrrr on our computer)
I wont be able to sleep today, but i do want to thank the author for at least showing us that we are all in danger.
Israeli guards, brrrrrrrr

Biking is fun, because you can carry some nice bread, cheese and fruits and sail through long distances. They are encouraging more of it in DC with rental bikes, and it does get painful if you try to see all of Washington DC's monuments on foot. But on a bike, you could be with Leonardo in the national gallery, and then just in minutes you can hangout with very determined looking Mr. Lincoln.
Regards,
Minhaj.

Very well said, Felipe. Any mention of the ancient world is most welcome! We have truly lost that. The ancient cities were owned and ruled by pedestrians. If I could travel back to ancient Rome, I would walk around the city, eating bread. I heard they had over 250 bakeries in the imperial city.

Passing from Egypt to Gaza is fully under the control of Egypt and Hamas - thankfully Egypt is still rational enough to not let armaments through.

As per "Rome, Macedonia, Persia, Byzantium, Babylonia and even Assyria" and now even the British Empire and the Russian one - all buried in history while a remnant of the people of the book are still amongst us - too bad, eh Felip?

Come and walk inside Israel and see the peoples living together - including the Arab Christians (a rarity outside of Israel), Arab Moslems, Druze and Circassians.

Although I welcome any text concerning the topic of walking, I think nothing can surpass the essay "Walking" by Henry David Thoreau. Also the books by Peter Jenkins are worth mentioning, especially his " Walk Across America".

This reminds of a voyage to the centre of Britain to visit the mythic ‘postrema castra’, the last Roman camp to the North border with the Celts and probably the best of them all, Vindolanda. It has nothing to do with Carnuntum –the last cavalry outpost to the East in the Pannonian plain- in that the walls and all sort of remains have been preserved in the black turf of Northumberland, and the palisade has been exquisitely reconstructed.

From Newcastle upon Tyne you reach by train Haltwhistle, a small town with a lovely pub and from there there is a walk in the drizzle through fields with grazing cows and earnest farmers along Hadrian’s Wall, the northernmost border of the Roman Empire, which in some parts is as high as China’s Great Wall. With the sight of the Roman limes in the background through the silent green fields as the only company, you reach Vindolanda, a prime archaeological site to understand the ways of the Roman Army and its day-to-day intraction with locals. Remarkable.

I'd rather be an Arab in "Israeli sieged"Gaza - than an Arab in Arab shelled Syria! More dead there than in the pinpointed Israeli attacks in retaliation for Ball Bearing filled rockets lobbed over in the general direction of Israeli Kindergartens and Hospitals.

Read history and learn that the only occupying power of the West Bank was Jordan from 1948-1967 - prior to than, it was part of mandatory Palestine earmarked by the international community for the Jewish Homeland, agreed to by amongst others King Feisel, and since then by its legal suucceser, Israel.

even with the terrible restriction of having the hundreds of trucks entering Gaza from Israel with supplies searched for weapons (ever been searched entering the UK for drugs?) - than an